


Bloodletting

by lalalive



Category: Muse
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Blood and Gore, Consensual Violence, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-10-06
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:50:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/989017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalive/pseuds/lalalive





	1. Chapter 1

PROLOGUE  
 **Toulouse, France**

1183AD

He woke to the smell of fire. The house had become too warm for his lambskin blanket and he nearly snarled in contempt at Sonia's inability to extinguish the fireplace embers before she went to bed. She was always forgetting, and he had lost precious moments of sleep doing it for her in the wee hours of morning before Papa woke up to scold them both. 

And then, tapping through his brotherly aggression, came the sound of a too loud, heated roar and a clang of metal. The sound of wood snapping and molding under flames. Matthew shot upright in his bed, staring at the chaos before him. This was no simple cooking fire, this was a home becoming devoured by hell itself. Months of preparation and survival took over. He grabbed the cloth sack next to his bed and ran, barely registering the burn of his skin on hot wood, straight for his sister's corner of the room. 

"Sonia!" he shouted. He shook her, perhaps too violently, and watched as her eyes grew wide at the sight of him flanked by orange and yellow.

She didn't speak, merely took his hand and let herself be lead through their farmhouse. They paused, briefly and in terror, at their parents' room. It had been annihilated, the wood and metal making splinters of the walls and ceiling. Sonia screamed, Matthew watched in silence. There were no human sounds in the house other than the echo of Sonia's shriek. Their parents had been long gone, perhaps targeted first by the mercenaries before the rest of the house fell under siege. 

There was no time for idle thought of strategy, nor any thought beyond getting to the safe house he and Papa had built when news of the Inquisition had reached town. Their family had too close of a relationship with a woman, Agatha Domrémy, they knew would be claimed a heretic. Matthew viewed her as a grandmother of sorts, her gentle temperament and fantastical stories made his desire to dodge his chores all the more enticing. But she had not shown in town center when the inquisitors had told them to gather, and when Matthew had run off to find her, well, it was then their family had been marked. It was only a matter of time before the mercenaries made their move. 

Transfixed by the fire, he had visions of how their family would be tortured if they survived this night. Rumours of the rack and a foreign method called strappado haunted phantoms of possibilities behind his eyes, igniting a new urgency into his legs. 

Pulling Sonia through the house and into the field, he noted, in his curious state of hyper-awareness, that the whole town seemed to be burning. There was so much smoke, he felt as though he were coughing charcoal; he could hear his sister struggling to breathe behind him. A war had spilled over and onto their land, no living creature was to be spared. He cringed as he dodged their cows, slain with spears and arrows, scattered and disembowled as though they were devils themselves. Only for a moment did he feel the blood soaked blades of grass tickle their gore between his toes before he ignored that sensation too. 

"Matthew, no!" Sonia gasped, yanking her hand from his when she realized where they were headed. 

"Sonia, there is no time for argument, We'll be safe in there," he pleaded, rounding on her with his sack falling off his shoulder. 

"The Black Forest is forbidden!" He could tell she was desperate, wanting to check her friends' homes or for any survivors in town. She was barely 18, and had never truly experienced true terror. He wished he could explain that it was certain everyone they loved had been lost, could explain the politics to her and make her understand they were being punished for their kindness and that their religious fealty would no longer save them.

Instead, he imposed his decade of seniority over her, silencing her because he was her older brother and head of the family now, and he felt utterly debased by his guilt. It was a weak argument, one based on the grounds that he was the man and had to be listened to - weak and infantile - but he had run out of options. He fixed his sack on his shoulder once more and held his hand out to her, with more than a little force. 

She followed him in silence as he concentrated on the trees, glancing from trunk to trunk for the marks that he had made in the bark as a secret path. It was taking longer than he would have liked, with only the moon as a light source, and it too was becoming covered with a cloud of ash and smoke. All the whispers that the forest was haunted were unfounded, as weeks in its center had taught him, and the worst they had to worry about was coyotes or wolves that could have wandered too far south in search of food. The forest's reputation, however, would keep them safe from the creative horrors of humanity. 

When they reached the safe house, he pushed through the door and, as he pulled candles from his sack, he waited with baited breath for his sister's questions. He knew his way around the small house, more a shack than an appropriate living space, in the dark. Placing candles in each corner, he felt Sonia's eyes on him and he lit the wicks begrudgingly, as it was too soon that he was reintroducing himself to flame. 

"Why are we here?" Sonia eventually asked, still trying to catch her breath. 

Matthew couldn't bare to look at her, so instead he busied himself looking for the book Madam Domrémy had given him.

"We lied to you, Papa and I. To both you and Mama. All those times we were hunting, we were building this." He spoke his words sharply. "We knew from the merchants who came from Narbonne what was coming. People being burned alive and the horror of something called the Templar."

"Why didn't you tell us? Why didn't - "

"We hoped there would never be a need to." Bringing his eyes to hers, he cringed. She looked so frail in her night dress, brown hair, usually so smooth, mangled into a windblown mess. He knew she was no longer a child, but he would never stop feeling protective of her. Perhaps because they were only going to have each other from then on, his affections were more profound. 

That's why he had to try and accomplish the protection ritual Madam Domrémy had mentioned. She wasn't a witch, he was sure of it, she was a good Catholic woman, but she grew her own herbs with a mother who had taught her all the wonderful mysteries of nature. Matthew couldn't see how she was a heretic, just for understanding the Earth. 

He opened the book to the page he had marked, the dog eared corner bent so many times it was a permanent fold. From his sack, he pulled the pestle and mortar he had stolen from the Apothecary, it's nice marble sheen just three coins over what he could afford. Time had stifled his guilt, and necessity now governed his actions. 

"I promised Papa I'd take care of you if anything should happen," he said, carefully lining the ingredients in a row. "Ages ago, Madam Domrémy had told me of some little mixture of herbs or a ritual, I'm not sure, that brings protection." 

He finished arranging the items and stood to face Sonia. "If we do this, we won't need to worry. We'll be safe!"

She stared at him horrified. "Matthew…..that's… _heresy_." She whispered the word, eyes bulging out of her head.

"No, it isn't!" he exclaimed, approaching her. He suddenly felt mad with excitement. "It's just herbs! Spices! There is nothing forbidden about mixing them. Listen to me, if I can do this, we won't need to worry about mercenaries or the inquisition. We will survive this together! I won't need to worry about protecting you."

She backed away from him. "I can protect myself. I am a grown woman!"

He sighed. "I know, I know. I trust you can manage, but we could never have imagined this would happen. Any of this. Whatever all of this is!" He waved his hand around, gesticulating to the slaughter happening beyond the forest. "People are being murdered, Sonia. Tortured for their beliefs or by association to someone the Templar don't feel are faithful enough. We've been fed lies by the Pope. No one is safe. We are not safe, and haven't been for months." 

He stepped closer to her, hands coming to cup her face. "Let me try this, if it works on me, I want you to try it, too. Even if it doesn't, I will die making sure you're safe. I promised Papa I would, and I am not breaking that promise. Not after everything….not after tonight." He paused. "This is the only way I think I can keep my word." 

It was almost chilling how she regarded him with a scowl, and how like their mother she appeared. He could tell she didn't like a word he had said, felt uneasy and considered him a fool. He prayed that she would concede, let him try before any more risks needed to be taken. 

"The very idea of this is ridiculous," she said. "If anyone found out, if we were followed, what would we do then?"

"If this works, it won't be a problem, don't you see?"

"And if it doesn't? Matthew, I -" she cut herself off, then, suddenly losing the will to argue. "I'm too tired to debate with you. I can't change your mind, you've already made your choice."

There was a defeat in her voice, so unlike her usual tenacity, that made him suddenly feel like he'd betrayed her in the most obscene fashion. He could only hope that he could give her reason to trust him again. 

Kissing her forehead, he pulled away and returned to the arrangement on the floor. With practiced accuracy, he measured what he needed without a scale and placed it into the mortar just as he had been shown. He muttered the Latin from the book as he crushed the herbs into a paste.

Sonia came to stand in front of him, watching his process with a quizzical, and skeptical, eye. 

"Oh, Matthew," she sighed, "Latin? It was never your strong suit, are you sure it's even right?" 

He ignored her and continued, saying exactly what he had been taught. If only she knew how often he had repeated it; while he worked, while he slept, the words were never far from his tongue.  When he finished, he ran his fingers along he inside of the mortar to gather a large amount of paste onto the tips. Grimacing, he eyed the putrid green shade and held his breath, smearing it over his tongue before swallowing it whole. 

It tasted vile, and he struggled not to gag or spit it all back up. It seemed to coat his throat and burn on the way down, boring holes into the lining of his esophagus. The core of him started to vibrate, and, for a fleeting second, he allowed himself to smile at his success. 

And then everything fell apart.

A piece of him, he was unsure which, became unhinged inside of him. His organs felt like knives, and he curled in on himself to let out an agonized scream.

"Matthew!" Sonia rushed toward her brother, her cheeks going pale, but Matthew flung out a hand to stop her. 

"Stay back," he murmured, struggling to speak as blood spilled from his mouth and down his chest. He spat something that looked like a small piece raw meat into his hand and started to hyperventilate.

"Ma-Matthew, what's happening." Sonia's voice was no more than a whimper.

He fell backwards, eyes rolling into the back of his head before his lids could close as he squeezed them shut. From deep within him, he was being torn apart, sliced into fractions and left to bleed. When his body began to twitch, when all control was lost, he started to revel in the sensation of pain, almost enjoying the new ways his fingers could bend. Back arching of the floor, he moaned and stopped himself from laughing as he felt his spine creak like steel. 

In the back of his mind, he registered a new presence, one looming above him like a predator. He wanted to welcome it, to let it in, and hoped that maybe it would end his personal hell. Maybe it was an angel, his guardian angel, and this pain was there as a test of purpose. It was a nice thought, but he knew that, whatever it was, it wanted to bury itself in all the secret and unfathomable places under his skin - wanted to wear him like a cloak and he slowly felt himself surrender.

"Sonia," he whimpered, pathetically. "Run."

It didn't even sound like his own voice, sounded wet and crude, but he was glad she obeyed. He heard her run past him, perhaps the way they came. She would seek help, and he only hoped the mercenaries had finished their slash and burn of his childhood, and that Sonia would find a way to survive on her own. 

It was the last coherent thought he had before he felt his tongue begin to shrivel and his heart suddenly pause. His body flopped along the wooden floor for minutes, trembling and shaking as it broke down and his lungs collapsed. The systematic shattering was a means of transforming into something unlike anything he was prepared for, something utterly inhuman. Clenching his teeth together, he groaned when he realized he'd chewed a hole through his cheek lining. He registered the delicious taste of his own nutrients before everything, including himself, died. 

But then...time meant nothing.

Seconds were hours, and he could hear everything.

Could smell the pulse of youth not far from him.

He was hungry, starving, positively aching for the satisfying bitterness of iron. Opening his eyes, the darkness welcomed him and he laughed, reveling in the timbre of ice. What bliss it was to be alive again and, oh, how eager he was to feast his way across the Earth. 

He was running. He didn't know when he decided to move, but the trees were moving at an incomprehensible speed. The scent he hadn't realized he was following was getting stronger, more powerful, and suddenly she was there. In front of him, beneath him. 

His hands ran over her chest and she was screaming. What a glorious symphony! How stunning she looked as terror licked at her features. How absolutely warm she felt, all that blood pulsing in her neck, wrists, thighs, chest, my god he could hear it all. There were so many ways to break into her, so many angles and locations that would send her blood cascading down his throat. It was all too much. 

And it was almost poetic the way her chest came apart in threads, as though she were made of cotton rather than flesh and bone. The slight gurgle in her scream made him snicker at the absurdity of the noise. He barely registered the way her eyes turned to glass when he ripped the pulsing organ from the center of her, before he brought his teeth to the soaking meat of the thing and bit with a force. 

Oh, the juice of her was a holy nectar. He sucked, and sucked, until he felt it turn to wax in his hands. He'd drained it completely, but it wasn't enough. Cupping his hands, he brought them to the cavern he'd made of her body, scooping her blood up and into his mouth like he'd found the fountain of youth at the River Styx. He was staining himself crimson, and the beauty of the shade made him quiver with delight. 

Such a small frame surprised him at the length of time it took before he'd had all of her, before she had been consumed and withered as though she'd been dead for years. Eyes shut, he licked his lips in the moonlight and reveled in the silence. Had there ever been an evening more beautiful? 

When he opened his eyes, in a slow, casual, almost post-coitus way, he brought his gaze to the young woman's face and suddenly…there was a war inside himself. 

He didn't know what he'd become, no longer knew who he was or what he had let inside. 

It was Sonia's face, her slack jawed shock and empty eyes staring up at him that made him release a gut wrenching howl into the forest that sent ravens flying from their nests into the night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Recorded Journal #826**

June 23, 2011

London, England

If I had to think about it, I mean really stop and choose, I'd say he was my favourite. But how can one truly pick their favourite pet without doing a sort of injustice to those who came before or potentially after? Comparison is such a uniquely human and cruel trait that I occasionally am sad I don't have the taste for it. The inherent competition between friends and lovers is so...natural to humanity, I find it adorable. In the end, though, I would have to say there was always something special about him.

My fondness of him was not because he smelled like heaven and tasted even better, though those things are so spectacularly true. No, I believe it was because he wore his innocence like a badge of honour waiting to be defiled. In all the subtle ways he smiled and batted his long eyelashes while we were nothing more than strangers, he was simply begging to be torn apart and felt from the inside. And if one so desperately seeks something I am more than happy to give, then I am anything but a monster, though many have made such a case. It's such a strange word, when one could even say I am a beast and a savage, but really it's all about the label that sticks in a language so open to interpretation.

I’d watched him for sixteen nights before he even realized I was a returning customer. He’d serve me a drink, the same every night, and never notice that I didn’t drink a drop. Instead I would study him, learn his movements, and listen to the blindingly delicious symphony of the blood in his veins. His entire being was comprised in simplicity and routine, and I could hardly wait to manipulate his axis.

On the seventeenth night, he brought his eyes to mine and coyly bit his lip. It only ever takes a single look, and I admit that part of me was upset he gave himself away so early. I removed myself from the corner I had come to call mine just to place myself in front of him, balanced uncomfortably on a stool at the bar. Thankfully, I was not to be there long. People on stools rarely are, and I suppose that is the purpose of their design.

‘You’ve made yourself a regular,’ he said, his polite smile borderline flirtatious. I wanted to push it over the brim.

‘I do believe I’m developing a habit.’

Sitting in front of him, I was utterly ambushed by the scent of him. I took a deep breath and held it inside me, letting lick at all the dark crevices of me before releasing it slightly drunk with power.

‘I’m Dominic,’ he said. ‘But everyone just calls me Dom.’

‘Matthew.’ I smiled as I my spun the rim of my drink on the table. ‘That’s a nice Catholic name. You believe in God?’

He appeared taken aback, but quickly regained his composure to smirk at me.

‘Heavy talk for a bar.’

It fascinated me how calmly he eyed me, how trust worthy the human race had become. He lacked suspicion in every facet of himself and leaned on the counter to bring himself closer. Incandescently golden, he was so terribly pretty I almost felt myself fall into a pre-emptive state of mourning.

‘Yes,’ I chuckled, ‘but I don’t think I’m in the right place for a therapy session.’

Cocking his head to his side, he pondered his answer for a moment and in the silence I took him in. In a different light, he might have been a Roman soldier. The thought only made me want to desecrate his features, paint him dirty and break him until he begged for more.

‘I don’t believe in myths,’ he said, simply.

‘Good. I find that myths will only cause you pain in the end.’

He agreed with my statement and I trilled with the excitement of bending him until he fully believed.

It is a common fallacy that the topics of religion and politics are to be avoided in polite, social conversation, but I’d engaged in enough small talk to know that the shackles of inhibition were removed once one of those topics is breached. Every single time, it was easy to tell that if the line had been crossed, there was no holding back the verbal deluge that followed. And oh, did he have a lot to say.

There was a particular cadence in his voice, a lilt I couldn’t quite place, which hung in the air as he spoke to me about everything that crossed his mind. I wanted to absorb every detail, needed to learn the small nuances of him so I could find the angle; figure out which pieces I would eventually need to hide. Perhaps it was the freedom with which he spoke that…endeared me, but it was the somewhat magnificent way I could hear the rhythm of his heartbeat over his speech that made me almost regret its inevitable end.

We spoke until the bar closed, the clock turning just past one in the morning, and I admired the way he bypassed any sort of hesitation to boldly ask me to come home with him.

You see? I had done nothing and it was as though dear Dominic was practically begging me unmake him.

Only now do I wonder if he noticed the way I walked slightly behind him as he guided me to his flat, letting the light breeze blow the scent of him into my nose and slightly open mouth. Had there been any thread of benevolence left inside of me, I might have fallen in love with the way the skin of him reflected the moonlight, how the muscles of his arms seemed to strain the sleeves of his tight shirt as he kept his hands buried deep in his jeans pockets. The curve of his arse was something to behold, trapped behind tight denim and flexing as he walked. He was utterly glorious, a modern marvel of humanity.

Silence was our gentle brother throughout the journey, words seeming to have been abandoned and left at the bar. In a way, it made it easier. He was cool and casual, without expectation – my favourite kind of person. It was only when he pushed through his door and turned on the light that he bothered to speak.

‘Sorry it’s really small. Shoreditch, you know? Not gonna find impressive real estate on my salary.’

Appraising the small studio, I nodded and hummed.

‘No flatmates?’ I asked, softly.

‘Nah.’ He pulled his wallet out of his back pocked and tossed it onto the small counter top. ‘Dropped out of uni and suddenly lost all my friends. Made it hard to find someone to share the rent.’

I turned back to him, having spun in a small circle and seen its messy entirety. ‘No family to help?’

He laughed. ‘Christ, you’re nosy.’

I feigned a blush and looked at my feet.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ he amended. Leaning against the counter he took a sip of water from a glass that had been left there. I wondered how long it had gone untouched. ‘Both parents are dead, gran doesn’t want anything to do with me. Such is life.’

I studied him and somehow managed an expression somewhere between a grimace and a smile.

‘Don’t do that,’ he said, chuckling. ‘I know that face. People thinking I’m a pathetic charity case. Trust me, I’m not.’

‘Oh, Dominic,’ I said, gently. ‘I don’t think you’re pathetic at all.’

In fact, he was perfect.

Placing the glass back on the counter, he pushed himself forward and came to stand in front of me, shoving his hands into his back pockets. His puffed out chest made him appear taller, stronger somehow. I smirked the charming inferiority of the motion.

‘So, what about you? You know way more about me than I ever intended to share.’

‘What would you like to know?’ I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

‘Well, where are you from?’

‘Everywhere,’ I said flatly.

He snorted and pulled out a wooden chair from his table. He motioned for me to do the same. ‘You move around a lot then?’

I held his gaze and tried to ignore the silent onslaught of sound of his blood rushing beneath his flesh. Sitting myself down, I sighed. ‘Yes, is the simple answer.’

‘Cool,’ he nodded. ‘Where were you born?’

‘France.’

‘You don’t sound French,’ he stated.

‘Vraiment? Et maintenant?’

How easy it was to slip back into the luxury of my native language. How beautiful his face was as he tried to process the words.

He was such a simple creature, so easily overcome by anything remotely remarkable that I just couldn’t help myself. I’d been patient and I’d played the game before. I could have had him, made him want me more than he’d ever wanted the breath in his lungs, could have bent his will until he screamed for me to take him. But what would have been the point? He was already where I needed him to be.

I reached forward, sliding the tips of my fingers along the scratched oak of his table, until my hand gripped his wrist. He didn’t move, didn’t flinch. Lifting it up, I rotated it until the soft skin that lead to his palm faced me. Blue veins shining like a beacon, I brought his wrist to my mouth and kissed, letting my tongue draw a single line along their route with my teeth grazing the same trail soon after.

I’d already known before I met him that his blood ran shallow and close to the top of his skin. I felt it flow beneath my lips for several seconds, sucking as though he was nectar, before I relinquished his arm.

‘Fuck,’ he said whispered.

I might never fully know what compelled me, but somehow I had come to stand in front of him, had placed my hand under his chin and lifted him to his feet. Gripping the hard bones of his jaw, I brought his lips to mine and kissed him with fury. Every atom of my being wanted to suck his lips until they were bright red, wanted to watch the way I controlled the rush of his blood.

It was the taste of him that made me growl, it was the stroke of my tongue along the curve of his bottom lip that made him whimper.

Too soon I broke away and chuckled at his suddenly black eyes, dilated pupils urging me to continue.

‘See you soon, Dominic,’ I said, heading towards the door.

I was halfway down the street when I could no longer hear the pounding of his beating heart.


	3. Bloodletting

It’s almost impossible to explain how absolutely electrifying it is to suddenly be in complete control over another being’s blood flow. How just one, single touch, can cause a deluge of affect through the veins and up into the cheeks. It is a control so poetic in its ability to unhinge a heartbeat with a glance from sheer anticipation, and it is a power, I have learned, that comes with a set of rules. There is a delicate balance that hangs between haste and the purity of lustful desire that must be dealt with carefully. Being given such control is a delicate honor, one that requires patience and the slow passage of time that kindles a fire pregnant with possibility. 

To say that I had found myself aching in hollow crevices of my obsidian soul to break these rules for dominion over Dominic is an understatement. There was a violence to his innocence, the likes of which I had never seen before. I did the dance around him, the slow courting, the hungry glances from behind a bar, and I kept the distance I had kept from the start: reel him in without sailing out too far. But Dominic, dear Dominic, came crashing through every door I’d propped open and willingly placed himself in the trap. 

The nights I saw him, he’d pull me into the back alley to suck my mouth and beg me through keening whines to press my knee just a bit harder into his groin. The nights I didn’t see him, the nights I kept my distance to keep him on edge, I could smell the pant of his breath and the ache of his cock through the bar window. He’d made it so easy, the inherent virtue of him practically craving to be ripped clean through and diluted. 

We carried on like this for a month, playing chaste under watchful eyes only to ignite slowly in the dark. The restraint I exorcised with him could only be considered glorious. Not once did I mark that pretty white flesh, break it open and spill him inside out, even though I knew he would come apart like satin. The greatest gifts are those that are delayed, and I would make sure to savor every drop of him. And perhaps what made him so arrestingly perfect was that he never asked questions, he merely assumed his answers based on the ground-rules of casual sex. I had yet to fuck him, but he expected nothing from me and was only too happy to give me everything so long as I was willing to take. He never asked questions of where I went during my day, because, to him, it was none of his business. He never asked if there were others, because we had no agreement. And there were others, oh, there were so many others. But it was his indifference and uninquisitive nature that made him the most perfect bird of prey I’d ever caught. 

Against the wood of his apartment door, after spending night after night easing him into shallow pleasure only to pull away before I drowned in the drum of his beating heart, I whispered the words into his mouth with a passion that walked along the edge of poisonous. 

‘Come away with me, Dominic.’ 

He laughed an easy, nonchalant laugh that made me angry. He’d not taken my words seriously.

‘Where would we go?’ was his gentle reply. He pressed his head against the door and smiled at me, lips moist with my saliva. 

‘I could surprise you,’ I said. I had a very specific location in my mind, one that would ensnare him completely in my world. 

‘I don’t like surprises.’ He cocked an eyebrow and I wanted to laugh in the face of his transgression. If only he knew.

I pressed my left hand into the bulge of his trousers. He hissed and I smiled. ‘Does that surprise you?’

‘Yes,’ he breathed.

‘Do you like it?’ There was an aggression to my voice which he mistook for lust, and the ignorance of his misinterpretation was almost beautiful.

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘Then let me keep surprising you.’ 

His acceptance of my offer was a gasped out whine as I squeezed his cock through his trousers, and I pulled away before I drove my teeth into the tendon of his neck to taste the way the cells of his blood had mingled with adrenaline. 

‘Why do you do that?’ he asked.

‘What?’ I hadn’t meant to growl.

‘Pull away…like you’re conflicted.’

I felt the left side of my mouth pull into a mangled sort of grin I hoped I could mask with some well practiced charm. 

‘Oh, Dominic,’ I whispered, pressing my lips to his ear. ‘You’ll soon realize I am a gluttonous creature. There’s no conflict about how very badly I want you.’ 

‘I -‘ he cut himself off with a sigh as I licked the shell of his ear. ‘It would need to be somewhere cheap. I really can’t afford much.’

‘You’ll not need to worry about price.’

‘What are you, my sugar daddy?’ he laughed. I punished the insult with a nip to his earlobe and his body shook.

‘I’m someone who won’t let a petty thing such as money come between your undoing.’

‘And why am I being undone? Who’s to say it won’t be me bringing you to your knees with my tongue?’

It was this kind of talk that humans so often gave that made me want to snap their necks and leave their bodies behind just so I could show them how persistently stupid they were. The trait on Dominic, however, was relatively endearing, and rather than end his existence with a swift sort of mercy, I found some thrill of excitement in dragging out the proof of my control over him.  

And such proof had already shown itself the in the ways I never once needed to influence him in any other realm than the physical. He came willingly when I asked, gave in because he wanted to, let himself fall apart in my hands because the truth was that he was just as hungry for pleasure as I was. 

In a sense, I guess you could say the devil was in the details of our brief vacation. I told him he’d only be with me for a week, that he’d be more than pleased with the accommodation, and that he would be provided a brief, yet in depth, look into my life. He never questioned if they were half or whole truths, and he blithely followed along with the plan, requesting time off work not twelve hours after I had suggested a date to him. 

I picked him up on his last night at work and drove him to his doom, his body lingering between sleep and wakefulness throughout the journey.

And, I guess, you could say he sauntered into his coffin with a weekend bag and look of awe painted on his face. 

I had a home on the outskirts of Northampton, a seventeenth century manor tucked behind a large row of trees and an elaborate garden. Dominic asked me what I did for a living, asked how I could afford such a thing, and I casually told him it had been bequeathed to me by the previous owners, family friends with some sort of title, who wanted to retire someplace smaller. It was mostly honest; the previous owners did indeed hold a title. I was generously using the term ‘bequeathed’, as I had slaughtered them all in their sleep one summers eve during the dull year of 1622. With everyone dead, who else would care for such a beautiful house? I didn’t tell him I had several other places such as this one. 

It didn’t matter. He’d never see them. 

I showed him the room he would be staying in, a large room on the third floor with a four poster bed and velvet curtains. It had its own bathroom, hardwood floors, and a plush setée pushed into the corner in front a row of large bookcases. I admit the room was terribly gauche but the furnishings suited me and I liked the way the bloodstains on the floor made the wood seem a bit scorched. He dropped his bags with a detached sort of envy, obviously assessing that the room was larger than his entire apartment, and he bit his lip as he turned to smile at me.

‘So. We’ll be coming to yours from now on, I think.’

I chuckled and stepped toward him, loving that his heartbeat increased just from my modest approach. ‘I’m very happy you approve. I told you that you would like this surprise.’

‘I like it very much…Daddy.’ 

His use of the term ‘daddy’ incited a rage in me the likes of which I hadn’t felt in centuries, and I pressed my hand against his chest as I backed him against the mantle of the fireplace across from the bed. 

‘I am not your Daddy,’ I growled into his neck. I flattened my tongue and ran it along his skin, smiling when I felt him shiver and go limp. ‘Your Daddy does not want to do the things I want to do to you.’ The pounding of his heart was like music, a tangible sort of song that I could sink my teeth into and suck until it was mine completely. 

I pulled away then, leaving him cold. His eyes were closed, his lips parted. He absolutely was my favourite thing to dismantle. ‘Take a bath, Dominic,’ I said softly. ‘You’ve had a long day.’ 

With that, I turned on my heels and left him to regain his composure.


	4. Bloodletting

Now, I am many things but at the core of me, buried underneath the years of dust and decay, are the threads of man capable of countless sins. I, as any other, fall to temptation against their best wishes, and so it is for this reason that I cannot be blamed for the the way I succumbed so completely to my urges after one single breath of his moist flesh. He’d taken my instruction like an obedient dog, undressing and climbing into a hot bath to ease his muscles. I’d retreated to my study, sitting in a leather chair contemplating what was and what would soon be when I was overwhelmed by the smell of him. 

It had taken centuries to get used to my heightened senses - to walk at speed with my companions, to block the sounds of their hitched breathing, their beating hearts, the flow of their blood, the synapses of their brains firing too quickly for them to notice. I’d become so adept at blocking these things from my awareness that the sudden onslaught of _him_ made my control unravel and my usually flaccid cock twitch with hunger. That the majority of taste is comprised of smell meant my mouth began to salivate, and, as I shut my eyes to savor the flavors my imagination could concoct, I suddenly became victim of my own desire.

Dragging my tongue along my lips, I leaned back in the chaise and scratched my nails along my thigh. Releasing a hiss of breath into the air, I adjusted my hips to ease the tightness within my trousers and began to feel as though I had become submerged in the bath with Dominic. With minimal focus, I could hear his breathing, the sighs of pleasure escaping his lips, the calm rhythm of his heart. My brain filled the images in around the senses, and I imagined his hair growing wet, his lips growing red, the water pooling and lapping against the lines of his ribcage. Without my consent, my hips started writhe slowly in the base of the chaise and I ran one hand through the folds of my hair. 

He was such a fragile thing, held together only by thin lines of cartilage and malleable bone. I could so clearly picture the perfect shade of crimson his blood would stain the porcelain and the water. Oh, it would swirl like paint and colour him something magnificent, a masterpiece for me to lick clean. I thought of drowning him, thought of pulling him from limb to limb and drinking him through a straw. Neither of these things were satisfactory, no he lived with such naivety he deserved to die beautifully and tragically. Instead, I settled on the thought of fucking him raw and sucking the breath straight from his lungs. 

The sounds of his fingertips streaking along the wet rim of the tub reached my ears, and I bit back a moan at the thought of being the cause of such a sound; that it was my body fucking his bones to ash that made his fingers slip for purchase. Gripping the fabric of my trousers in my right hand, I let my rampant imagination feast on the reality of his impending death and let my throat become wet with excitement. 

I might never know how long I remained in such an uncharacteristically vulnerable state, but soon I found myself propelled from the chair, forced into action by the all consuming need to satiate my libido, and was at his door within seconds. Pressed against the wood, cold handle held tightly in my hand, I could hear him coming to rise from the tub. I was assailed by the noise of such a simple action, stunned by how starved I had truly been for the simple pleasure of tarnishing human chastity. 

He hadn’t locked the door, and it thrilled me to wonder if it was due to either a misplaced sense of trust in me or the subtle yearning at the core of him for me to find him, expose him, consume him. It only convinced me further that some people were merely born to die whether they realized it or not. 

My sudden entrance had startled him, made him pause in the center of the room wrapped in a white towel. Water slowly made its way through the hairs of his legs, dripping down his skin like sweat, blood, or come. I wanted to drag my tongue in a long line up to the apex of his thigh and swallow it down. If I was capable of such a feeling, I would have fallen in love with the way he stood still as I approached him, eyes wide and unassuming. It was vibrating off him, the desire to be touched; I could sense the way his blood cells were swelling with lust and anticipation. 

From the very depths of my soul, I felt the familiar, primal sense of hunger and control about to brim over and shatter my nerves. Like fire, it was spreading from my chest and down into my thighs, across the muscles of my shoulders, and into my neck, turning me into the base creature I was only too proud to be. I reveled in the way his eyes shut, lashes splaying across his cheeks, as I brought a hand to his neck. The subtle tilt of his head was so perfectly timed I wanted to throw him down and rip him open as a love note to the action. 

We both let a small exhale of breath trespass beyond our lips as my hand made contact with his damp skin. Touching his neck felt like I was reaching down through him and stroking his soul, his pulse beating against my hand like a wire ready to be pulled. My hand was aching to tighten its grip and watch his neck snap at an irregular angle. Bringing my face close to his, I hummed softly as we began sharing breaths, holding back from fully placing my mouth over his. He wanted it, desperately. I could smell the sweet scent of arousal wafting of him in thick fumes. 

I held him on the precipice of need, barely letting the edges of our lips touch for as long as I could possibly stand. Slowly, I brought the the tip of my tongue to the center of his bottom lip and traced the plump skin before he too brought his tongue out into the open. He moaned at the contact and I offered him a shallow laugh before plunging into the wet cavern of his mouth. 

If I were any other man, indeed if I were a man at all, I would have been utterly enamored with the way he delivered himself to pleasure. Dominic only let himself wither beneath the weight of the kiss for a moment before he wrapped his arms around my neck like a vice. The nails in my fingers were starting to sharpen, turning themselves into talons and aching to hitch under one soft flap of skin and tear and tear and tear until he was nothing but a broken ragdoll at my feet. My hand slid slowly up his neck to his cheek, the other pressing deeply into his arse as I massaged his tongue with mine. He was trembling in my grip, fingertips pressing into the muscles of my neck and my back in the hopes of finding some element of control over his bodily response. Smiling minutely, I squeezed the round flesh of his arse through the towel to exert the power I had over his body, and he tipped his head back to release a pornographic moan. 

Neck bared, I could barely help myself. He was offering me dessert before I’d even had my fill of his meat. I moved my lips down his jaw, onto the stretched tendon and placed my tongue flat against the skin. His fingers twined in the hair at the base of my neck as he pressed my face deeper, his body harder against mine.

‘Oh, _Daddy_ ,’ he whispered. 

Part of me wished I could have focused on the thick weight of his voice, heavy with sex and arousal, rather than his audacious disobedience. But he had spoken the words with the intention of my response, the expectation of punishment lingering in the atmosphere, and I felt the rage erupt from within me like a wrathful volcano. In an instant, I had lifted him from the floor, the towel unraveling from his waist, and wrapped his legs around me as I walked him back and crushed him against the wall. 

The force of my body pressing against his caused him to become winded, but he laughed through his gasps of breath and smiled with half lidded eyes. I cocked an eyebrow at him, our faces inches from one another, and took his hand in mine to drag it up the wall.

‘Laughter? Did you like that, you slut?’ I whispered.

He tightened his legs around mine, grinding his hips in the process.

‘Fucking loved it,’ came his reply, his tongue lapping over my lips as he spoke. 

His ignorance was astounding, and I’d had quite enough of him thinking he had the upper hand. I pulled him away from the wall, hands still bound together, and swiftly walked out bodies over to the bed where I dropped him. With wide eyes, he watched as I undid my clothes, his limbs splayed across the silk, cream sheets as he watched me undress. He was writhing like a whore, biting his lip like he wanted it to bleed as his fingers wound themselves into the bedding. 

As my shirt slid off my shoulders, he craned his head towards the skin of my abdomen, his eyes hungrily taking in the white of my flesh. I stepped back just an inch, distancing myself from his reach and reveled in the pathetic whine that erupted from his throat. I quickly undid my trousers and tugged them down with my briefs in one swift motion, relief stinging the nerves of my thighs as my cock was finally freed. 

Fully naked, I lowered myself to his embrace, wrapping an arm around him to slide our bodies back and up towards the headboard. He began nipping at my chin, sucking at skin, grabbing whatever piece of me he could. I merely hovered above him, smelling the arresting perfume of his arousal mixed with the soap he had used. His hard cock was rubbing against my own in his frantic efforts for closeness, and I marveled at the way urgency spread itself across his features. He was born to sin, born to burn in lust, and born to die as though he were burning from within. 

Reaching around to grasp both his hands, I pulled them away and placed them next to his head. I took this opportunity to give in to the monster that was begging to be liberated. I slid slowly down his body, my nose inhaling deep as I passed his nipples, his rips, his waist. His groin was an oasis, blood pumping so ferociously beneath the skin it took every inch of my self-control not to claw the flesh away and drink. No, I continued on, past his cock that was aching for attention and pressed my face to his inner thigh. 

This was my real treat, the large artery just beneath his groin, the second largest in the human body. I kissed the area gently like a prize before taking fingers into my mouth and wetting them with my tongue. Dominic had brought himself to lean on his shoulders, confused about why I would devote such attention to his thigh rather than his aching cock. His lips were glistening, sweat and bath water copulating along his hairline to paint him the picture of a heretic. I smirked at him, knowing he would catch my intention the moment he saw my fingers slide from my mouth, dripping with possibility. 

‘Do it,’ he said, voice dry with hunger. ‘Do it rough. That’s how I like it.’

Pieces of my dark heart came alive in the aftermath of his words, pieces only too happy to fulfill his wishes and make his voice plead - for more or for less, I couldn’t decide. The options were endless. 

With my left hand clutching the sharp bone of his hip, I brought my soaked fingers to his arse and drove them home, curling just so to make him howl. I laughed loudly, pleased that I was the cause for such a transfixing sound and began pumping my fingers in an aggressive rhythm. Dominic started to unravel beneath my hand, his whimpers echoing off the vaulted ceiling and making my own toes curl with purpose. 

‘Yeah, just like that,’ he moaned, one hand clutching an embroidered pillow as the other slid down his body to his cock.

‘Stop,’ I said, moving my hand from his hip where my fingers had left bruises to swat his own away. 

‘Please,’ he gasped. ‘I’m dying here.’

I had to stifle a laugh at his desperation, wanting to show him exactly what it meant to die and that this was nothing but a Shakespearean slaughter. 

‘Not until I tell you to.’ 

I moved my head from his thigh and brought my lips just centimeters from his dick, letting the breath from my mouth tease his back off the bed in a wide arch. 

‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut as he pressed his head back into the mattress. 

It was such a cruel thing to do, but with his body spread before me so open and willing for whatever whim may suit me, I couldn’t help but gently run the tip of my tongue in a small circle along the base of his cock. The sound that came from his chest was the most glorious, keening whine I had ever heard and so I did it again just to spite him, my fingers never once stalling in their rhythm.

‘ _Fuck_ , me.’ 

I sniggered and licked my lips.

‘Not yet.’

Adding a third finger, I returned my attention to his femoral artery and, knowing he liked to play rough, wondered just how far I could push him. 

‘Dominic,’ I said, the edge to my voice almost metallic. ‘Can I…bite you?’

‘What?’ he gasped out as I curled my fingers inside him. 

‘Can I bite you,’ I repeated again, this time without the inflection of a question. I was eying the way his leg was quivering, spread wide to accommodate my body between his legs. The urge to sink my teeth into his artery was breathtaking. ‘I promise it won’t hurt, not for too long.’

He contemplated my words as best he could in the throes of ecstasy, choking on his answer as he struggled to catch his breath.

‘Su-sure, just fucking touch me soon. I can’t take it.’ 

His words of consent had barely made it past his lips before I brought my teeth to his thigh and bit down, piercing the skin in one swift motion. Beneath me, Dominic’s body jerked and he screamed in a hollow sort of timbre that melted from pain into a giggle of pleasure as I sucked the wound I had just created. To bite such a delicate artery, one had to be careful - one single, misplaced tooth could cause a human to bleed out within seconds. This was not the eve of Dominic’s death, and therefore I placed my mark just outside of the artery, nicking it rather than eviscerating it completely. 

Blood seeped into my mouth, overflowing and dripping down his leg in a thin line to stain the sheets. And he loved every moment of it. His hand flew to my hair, tangling in the strands to press my teeth deeper and he shifted his hips to meet my mouth in a helpless grind. 

He tasted sweet, like a massacre. There were memories in his blood, memories I could taste and feel deep within my veins. The iron and metal of him were intoxicating, and soon I became drunk on him. I could feel my eyes become blown out with black thirst, and suddenly he was every candied kill I’d ever had.

He was a fourteenth century nun, dying on a raised altar.

He was a Victorian dandy, begging me to drink and drink and drink until he lived inside me. 

He was an eight year old girl, homeless, orphaned, with blood like sugar. 

Before I could let myself drown in the deluge of his blood, I pulled my mouth away and heard him whine at the loss. My lips and chin were drenched in him and I grinned a cannibalistic grin that only made him moan with voracity. Placing my hand on his thigh, I pulled my fingers from him, and slid up his body to grab his neck and force him to look at me. With half lidded eyes, merely so he could not see the black holes they had become, I spoke to him.

‘Taste yourself.’

Dominic, bleeding beneath me and torn between moaning at the loss of my fingers or in confusion, was so _alive_ in my hands I was taken aback by the speed at which he placed his mouth over mine to suck his own blood from my tongue. I rewarded him by moving my hand from his thigh straight to his cock, grasping it firmly with slick fingers that had become coated in red. His hips lurched off the bed into my grip, his eyes opening wide as he craned his head back and screamed. It was absolutely beautiful to see his mouth open wide, dyed red from his own insides. 

I would never apologize for the laugh I released, dark, foreboding, and entirely inhuman. 

He didn’t even notice, just drove the palm of his hand into his forehead as I pumped him quickly and mewled like a starved kitten.

‘There’s-there’s lube in the - in the -‘ 

He could barely get the sentence out, his breath catching in his lungs with every attempt to speak.

‘There’s lube in the top drawer,’ he finally managed through grit teeth. 

‘Someone was eager,’ I whispered, lips pressed against his ear as I twisted my hand.

‘Fuck me,’ he spat. His hand frantically slapped against the bedside table to open the drawer, and I laughed at his attempts to pull the tube out. ‘Fuck me, Daddy, I’m going to come right here, right now unless you fuck me like I want you to.’

I ripped the tube from his hands and lathered it on my numbed and neglected cock before spreading it generously over his arse. Brow furrowed, I poised myself at his entrance and glared at him.

‘Je vais te niquer comment je _veux_ te niquer’ I ground out and, during his pause to try and understand what I had said or to try and see if my eyes really were as black as they appeared, I pushed myself in all the way. 

His wail was a hymn, and I stretched my head back to listen to the echo. The rhythm I found was borderline belligerent, but he didn’t mine. Dominic’s nails were scratching down my back, his teeth nipping at my collarbone as I fucked him into submission. Legs wrapped around my waist, I almost rejoiced at the sensation of his blood soaking into my hip and dripping down into the space between our bodies. His cock was trapped beneath my weight, slick and pulsing with heat like it could burn straight through me. 

He felt like velvet, muscles clenching around me like I was fucking a satin doll rather than a living thing. With every tap to his prostate, he curled himself around me tighter, pulling me deeper, until I was balls deep inside him and thought for sure I could fuck him wide open and watch him bleed out on the bed. 

‘I won’t last,’ he whispered. ‘I’m going to come, Jesus Christ, _Daddy_.’

‘Je ne suis pas ton papa,’ I growled. 

I was too far gone to be embarrassed that my control over the English language had slipped and I had reverted to my native tongue. Dominic didn’t seem to mind, as every inflection of my accent only made him suck harder on whatever piece of flesh he could find. 

‘I’m gon-gonna come,’ he gasped out. 

‘Non.’

This he understood.

‘Fuck’s sake, come on. Please.’ His voice was becoming little more than a desperate croak, exhausted from the effort of making his hips match my frantic pace. 

‘Seulement quand je dis.’ 

My orgasm was burning at the base of my spine, only a few thrusts away from brimming over and poisoning him. I was thriving off it, the control a few simple words had over him and I would make him wait until the very last second before he could empty himself onto our chests. On a whim, I decided to change the angle, lifting him up to sit in my lap, my legs bent beneath me as his wrapped around mine as though he were a coil. I slowed my thrusts, but made the upward thrust infinitely more powerful and he went limp in my arms. Resting his head on my shoulder, he panted for breath as his saliva dripped from his open mouth onto my flushed skin.

I wrapped one hand in his wet hair and tugged, stretching his neck before me as he shut his eyes and let his jaw fall open. 

‘Maintenant.’

He came with the force, spilling himself onto my chest and his as I came hard, buried deep within his body. His was a silent orgasm, one that was whispered in a plea as mine ended on a growl that made his body spasm while it vibrated through him. 

I released him, laid him back on the bed as I pulled out of him and watched some of my black come leak onto the cream sheets. Dominic was positively captivating in his post-coitus state, wrapping himself in the duvet as his chest rose and fell, glistening with sweat. He would sleep for hours, perhaps days, plagued by blood loss and the essence of evil I had spilled into him. 

I removed myself from the bed, gathered my things and left him to fall into a deadly sort of sleep while I came down from the high of living.


	5. Chapter 5

It would be utterly ignorant to assume that I remained at Dominic’s bedside as he slept, perhaps even more so to assume that he was the only object of prey I had focused on. Fidelity or monogamy, whatever human word that could be applied to the theory of singularity, means little to me. No human is so unique: all bleed the same, all are so painfully alive, and each is comprised of their own cadence of taste written into their DNA. Indeed, many are more delicious than some and Dominic was the flavor upon which all palettes were meant to be based. But it would be a lie to define myself as picky, deny that I was, in fact, the embodiment of greed - a lush for bodily fluid. And so, it was my lack of inherent selectivity mingled with Dominic’s beautifully flawed human trait of curiosity that lead him to his death. 

If I had learned anything about Dominic in the months I had spent studying him, it was that indolence did not suit his character. As a natural force of habit, he always had to be moving or in the process of completing a task otherwise the very shell of him would quake with an anxious sort of boredom. After only two short days, he pulled himself from sleep and began to move through the house as though he were trapped in a sensory fog. 

I was lounging in the library, reading a fifteenth century German medical text, when he slid into the room as though he were gliding over the floorboards. He was sluggish and barely lucid, his eyes struggling to focus. An unusual sort of terror filled me, wondering what exactly it was about this boy that meant he could be strong enough to even walk so soon after our joining, and I watched him with a calculating gaze in an attempt to see if something had gone wrong. 

‘How long was I asleep?’ he asked. His voice was thick and heavy, his words rolling off his tongue at a too slow pace to even be considered coherent. Gravity took hold him as he sat in the chair opposite me, sinking and dropping into the leather like he was being molded to fill it.

I smiled. ‘Two days.’

‘Jesus, I feel sick but I didn’t know I was that bad off.’ He leaned his head back against the chair, running a hand through his hair.

‘Are you hungry? You should eat.’ I said the words with a powerful sharpness I knew he would be too dazed to recognize or question me on. 

‘Honestly, if I eat I feel like it’ll just...come back up, you know?’

His lack of hunger eased my nerves at the sight of seeing him on his feet. He was fading, it was working. I fought past the urge to smile and morphed my face into one of mild concern and vague tenderness. 

‘Are you sure?’ 

‘Yeah.’ He paused to breathe deep, the milk white of his skin glistening through the effort of being alive. ‘How are you feeling? I probably gave you this.’ 

I snorted, and didn’t bother to mask its cruelty. ‘I’m fine. Perfect, really.’ 

‘Yes, you are,’ he said, somehow finding the energy to provide me with a lewd smirk. ‘That was the best orgasm of my life’

Death, though many would never know or allow it to be, was perhaps the most sensual and erotic experience imaginable. The total collapse and liberation of the soul from its bodily chains is, indeed, orgasmic, and it was no surprise to me that Dominic would have found his brief encounter with finality absolutely breathtaking. 

I grinned at him, a face I had spent decades learning how to make without the natural malice I felt it deserved. 

‘Go back to sleep. You’ll feel better.’ My words held the barest shades of a command, one that Dominic blithely ignored. 

‘No, I’ve been sleeping for days. I need to move around, get my mind off how I feel...if I can.’ He shook his head and heaved a shaking breath as he forced himself to stand. 

I frowned but said nothing. His body was withering and would soon give out beneath his weight. Throughout the endless and innumerable years of my life, I found that the frequency of my experience with the element of surprise been reduced to only a slight raise of the eyebrow at a human’s rare audacity. I’d grown used to the frail monotony of human survival and will, bored by its absurd lack of creativity. Oh, they would fight, gloriously attempt a triumphant battle but the body would never support the mind and soon they would surrender themselves to defeat. But I had not ever considered that, perhaps one day, I would be able to surprise myself.

Dominic had affected me, somehow brought me inches closer to humanity than I had been since before my turning. Like a diamond stone to a blade, he had sharpened my cruelty, smoothed the edges of my glacial heart merely by turning the act of hunting him into a gleeful game of simplicity. And so, when I heard the weary, slow footsteps aimlessly drifting through the house, barely awake or even aware of his surroundings, I found myself willing him towards the attic. 

How strange of me, honestly! To silently will a human towards their death days before it was truly meant to occur! But he sauntered towards his doom like he was a cat in heat, positively eager for it. Who was I to resist or deny him the finality he so obviously craved? And he did, oh he did. Just minutes after I began mentally guiding him, I heard him come to pause outside the attic door. 

Again, I surprised myself, hearing him easily turn the knob and open the door to ascend the stairs. I had left it unlocked, such an out of character thing for me to do that it became clear to me I had been subconsciously aware that it was time; that the death of a human is exquisite, but the death of a human whose face is painted with betrayal and shock is something biblical. 

There was a childlike excitement to the way I leapt from the chair to reach him, the kind of excitement I reserved for silent kills and the erasure of a person's identity to hide the nature of their death. He was slowly making his way up the stairs, leaning slightly on the railing. It felt natural to follow behind him in the shadows, to lead without the obvious exertion of power. This is was my purpose, the subtle control of a person's fate without the influence of their creator. 

He reached the landing and stared ahead, the muscles in his back tensing as he sobered to process the sight before him. 

The attic was a large space, one that covered the majority of the top floor of the house. At some point during the 1940's, I had the attic renovated to become a fully functional room, moving in the excess furniture I had acquired throughout the years. I had the pieces arranged and placed to act as an extra sitting area and dining area, a sort of retreat for myself if I needed the dark or the solitude. The walls were lined with bookcases which featured items not suited for my library, empty wine bottles with labels dating back to the 1700's, and various viles of herbs and poisons I had been making since boyhood. 

The overall decor of the room was cluttered, yes, but I imagine had there not been a naked woman bleeding on the dining table the most unusual aspect of the space would have been that it was carpeted with an Oriental rug. 

Paralyzed in a state of shock and confusion, Dominic became a more perfect version of himself. There was an otherworldly quality to the ugliness of his panic. The way terror and anxiety seemed to grip him him, course through him at a rapid pace was at once arousing and grotesque. I reveled in the sound of his racing heart, speeding up as the whole of him began to swell with adrenaline. 

It was a test of my will not to laugh at the way he took her in. I could sense his face had mutated into a grimace of disgust at the sight if her, glassy eyes open wide, pink lips open in a silent gasp. Perhaps what horrified him most were the several slits along various points of her olive skin, arms and legs splayed to hang over the edge of the wood. She was bleeding into crystal glasses, the blood trickling in lines down her skin to linger on the tips of fingers or toes before dripping home into the pool below. 

Having looked his fill, he whipped around to leave only to rear back and shout at the sight of me behind him, barely visible in the shadows.

'What the fuck is this?' he croaked.

I stepped forward and sighed. 'Oh, Dominic. I know you dropped out of university but I refuse to believe you are truly that stupid. Surely this is self-explanatory.'

'I-wha-who-' 

He was stuttering and I was bored of his mental failure. 'Spit it out.'

'I have so many questions I don't know where the fuck to start!' he said frantically.

'Why not start with the most obvious.'

'You're a murderer.' It was a statement that came without a moment's pause.

I chuckled. 'Well, that's one label I've heard for it.'

'"IT?"' he shouted. 'The fuck do you mean "it?"'

'Dominic, use your eyes and assess what you see before you. This is not a difficult test.' I gesticulated over to the woman, prompting him to turn around for a second look.

He took everything in, studied it with a reserved eye as his body cowered as far away from it as he could manage. He was repulsed and I was drowning in the thrill of his mental process. 

'The glasses,' he said, finally turning back to me.

I nodded. 'The glasses.'

'Why are...why is she bleeding into glasses.'

I growled. 'Why does anyone put something in a glass? To hang it from their ceiling? Just because they're made of crystal does not mean they lose their purpose.'

His eyes blew wide, his face turned pale. Realization looked so wonderful on his face, the horror of death mixed with his own awareness of his fate. 'You're going to drink her.' It was not a question. He knew.

'I intend to, yes.' I stepped towards him and he stumbled back, trying to keep distance between us.

'Are you a...a fucking _cannibal?_ ' He said the word like he was learning a dirty word and I wanted to break the purity of him in half.

I shook my head and stepped forward again. 'I'm not in this for the meat, child.'

Oh, his face as he understood my play on his continual use of the word 'daddy' was extraordinary. A concoction of mortification and pained betrayal, would that I could look upon such an expression until the sun dissolves. 

'So-so you're a....vampire.' He barely let the word hang in the air before speaking again, and I felt a twinge of wrath that he didn't allow me to bask in the truth for very long. 'That's impossible. They aren't real, just horror stories and Halloween tales to scare kids.'

'I am very real,' I said, taking several quick steps toward him. He stumbled back so quickly he tripped into one of the bookcases and pressed himself against it. 'I believe I told you that myths will only cause you pain on that very first night we met.'

'Who is she?' he asked frantically as I continued my approach. 

I'd seen it before. Such a human thing to do, deflect and change the subject to buy themselves time. It was a last effort to make me forget who the prey was, to remind me that there were eight chalices nearly filled to the brim with warm blood for me to drink. It never served as a proof of reason for them to live, merely made me want to silence them faster.

Coming to stand directly in front of him, I rolled my eyes and obliged him.

'Her name is Maya. She is 23, homeless, and a prostitute.' I brought my eyes back to her, the sight of her round breasts gleaming with a dried sheen of sweat, lines of her ribcage raised like a book of Braille. 

'Do you only kill society's rejects?' Dominic's voice brought my attention back to him.

'These days, yes.' I sighed. 'Oh, Dominic, if only you knew how hard this has become. Being me, slowly erasing humanity. It is no longer a means to survive, it has become a test of intelligence. I can't just hide the truth of my identity from you or the world, now I must also hide the truth of you as well.'

He had closed his eyes as he was attempting to sort through my words, plan an escape that would be flawed from the moment of its inception. I took it as an opportunity to continue. I would have him soon enough.

'It's no longer 1650, dear Dominic. Technology and science are against me. The claim of an animal attack does not suffice. I am lucky that my fingerprints were burned off as a result of my turning, but I am still burdened by weight and teeth marks. And...your colleagues. No matter how insignificant you are, someone will always notice your absence. Someone will always come looking. I cannot afford to not be neat.'

'Neat,' Dominic repeated weakly.

Again, I looked back at Maya. 'Do you know how long one has to drain a body of its blood after the heart stops?' I asked. He was silent. 'Well?'

'No,' he said, forcefully. 'Unfortunately that wasn't part of my biology A-Levels.'

'It takes two hours for the blood to congeal once the heart stops. I am sure you can understand how difficult it would be to accomplish this task if one is suddenly limited to time and scientific constraints. Oh, of course I could tear open your throat and feast, but again, the mess of you would be against me.' 

Under pressure, Dominic truly was a star. His gaze followed mine over to Maya, and I smiled at the sound of his breath halting momentarily before wavering an unstable continuation of its rhythm. 

'So-'

'So, yes, her heart is still beating.'

'You sick fuck!' he spat. 'Shes still alive and I get to watch her die? I'm not your accomplice!'

'No,' I said, giving him my attention once more. 'You are my dessert.'

The struggle in him erupted with a force. Suddenly he was trying to fight his way past me, screaming and lashing at me like a caged beast.

'You fucking cunt! You forced me here and lead me here to fucking die! You fucking bit me-'

I rolled my eyes and grabbed him by the neck, pressing him back against the bookcase with ease. 

'No,' I said sternly. 'You must be aware of this Dominic. Think of me what you will, but anything that has happened to you was a cause of your own consent. I never once had to influence my will over you. Do you realize how stunningly perfect that makes you?'

I pressed my face against his cheek, admiring its warmth as I inhaled a deep breath of his scent. My eyes rolled back into my head and I just couldn't resist licking along his cheekbone. 

'I can make you want it, Dominic,' I whispered, so close to his ear I was positively humming with the urge to bite it and tear it free. ‘I could make it sweet for you. For you, death would be something sublime. I can take the pain of it away. The whole time you’ll be begging me for more, to sink my teeth deeper, to suck -’ I took my time to linger on the word ‘suck,’ licking lightly at Dominic’s jawline. ‘Harder,’ I finished. He shivered and I nipped at the plump sinew of his cheek. 

He’d shut his eyes, biting his lip with a vulnerability that was electrifying. There was a quake to his bones that I found myself becoming addicted to and, for a moment, I found that I would miss his fear once it was gone. 

‘Or,’ I said in his silence.

‘Or?’ His eyes cracked open and I laughed at the hope he had somehow managed to place in his irises. His foolishness was astounding. 

‘I can offer you eternity.’

It took only seconds for his skin to pale, his body becoming a marble sculpture begging to be cracked.

‘Oh, think of it Dominic! I could take you on as my apprentice. Finally become your ‘daddy.’ After all, isn’t that man’s true purpose?’ I buried my face into his neck and inhaled. ‘To breed?’ The words were released as a growl, and I couldn’t resist pressing my hips just a little harder against his groin just to make him whine involuntarily. 

‘What if,’ he began, his voice dry and tentative. ‘I choose to live.’

I reared my head back, far away from his skin, and laughed a hearty laugh. 

‘Dominic, that is not a choice you have been offered. Do you know what I’ve learned in all my years? The only gospel truth that absolutely rings true? It’s that governments rise and fall, people plead for peace and amnesty, but the only thing that seems to carry on throughout the meaningless wasteland of human life is that everyone craves a little death. War and greed and death, it’s in every living thing’s nature. And I am giving it to you! Twice over! You will never, ever be in such control of your fate as you are now.’ 

He took in my words, eyes searching my face for some kind of a trick or sign of insincerity. After several moments, he gripped the wrist of my hand that was still around his neck and sighed. 

‘Let go of me.’

I cocked an eyebrow and stared at him.

‘Please,’ he said politely.

It is important to understand that Dominic had made a choice. It was there, lingering behind his eyes and I could see that he had settled on something, though I could not have been sure what that choice entailed. This was the tragedy of him, the tragedy of his story. Dominic was always in control of his own choices. There was a will at the core of him that could never be swayed, and, I assume, if I had tried to use my influence over him it would only have had the weakest effect. It was his greatest gift and his downfall; the total control he had over himself meant every choice belonged entirely to him, and every choice somehow lead him down the path of agony. 

And, perhaps, the barest shreds of mercy had been left inside me, lingering in the crevices of me unwilling to fully decay, because I obliged him. As soon as I released him, I could read his decision all over the furrow of his brow and the heroic glow of survival resonating off of him. I was only too eager to extinguish it.

My hand had barely left his throat before he launched himself at me, punching me with a surprising force before starting off at a groggy run. I sighed and rolled my eyes, quickly moving to plant myself in front of him. Part of me wondered, as my hand wrapped itself around his throat once more, if the ineptitude of humanity was a curse I would eternally be forced to endure.

I lifted him off his feet and held him against the bookcase, my thumb pressing deeply into his Adam’s apple. His breathing was strained, becoming a struggle beneath my tight grip and I sighed into the sound. 

I brought my face inches from his and ran my lips over his as I spoke.

‘I have thought about killing you since I first saw you. In my head, I have planned an infinite amount of ways to break you down.’

‘You-you’re a fucking monster,’ he choked out. I ignored him.

‘I could disembowel you, suck the blood from your still warm organs and feast on you until you were nothing but skin and bone.’

He whimpered, feet kicking against the shelf, and I chuckled.

‘Or...I could castrate you. Oh, that would be sight -’

‘No!’

‘I could kneel between your thighs and drink you down along with your pride.’

He squirmed desperately, true panic finally settling into the marrow of his bones.

‘But I can do neither of those things, because, again, I can’t afford to have you stain my carpet.’ 

‘Someone is going to find you!’ He was gasping the words out, forcing them out in a last ditch effort to live, to survive. ‘You can’t just-’

‘Shut up.’

I’d grown bored of him, and pressed my thumb and its sharp nail so deep into his throat that I pierced skin, burying it in his trachea. His voice became nothing but a series of gurgles, blood coming to run beneath my hand and overflow from his mouth. I reached beside his head to the bookcase and grabbed an empty bottle, laughing violently at my own wit. Placing the tip over the bottle underneath my thumb, I slowly moved my finger back to ease the bottle gently into the hole I had made. He drained into the glass so elegantly it was as though that were the true purpose of his blood. 

Now, I have always been a polite boy, but I felt I deserved a bit of a treat and the way the blood seemed to gleam on his lips was almost too tempting to deny. I kissed him hard, grabbing his bottom lip between my own, sucking and lapping at him. Pressing my tongue forward into his mouth, I pulled what I could from his mouth into my own, the kiss soon becoming too sticky to continue. 

I released his lips with a sigh, a long string of saliva and blood lingering between both our lips and I just...could not contain my joy. Truly, the sight of the life leaving his eyes was such a picturesque scene I wished I could keep his eyes open for an eternity. And so I smiled, my true smile, no longer a farce or a means to an end, a genuine smile. I was sure he was still alive to see it, my teeth bared and stained with his blood. I could hear his heart still beating when I stopped smiling.

I could hear his beating heart long after the bottle was full.

Sometimes, when I drink a glass of him, I am sure I can still hear that triumphant rhythm. 

**End of Record Journal #826  
Side A**


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